Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa

THE PARISH OF KILRUNDLE.

The night was stormy and black as pitch. Sheets of chilling rain sped lashing across the glen, driven by the whirling tempest. The burns in the hills, swollen into torrents, came tumbling down their rocky beds all foam and uproar, diffusing through the air an undertone of continuous thunder, that could be distinctly heard in each recurring interval of the gale. Along the road which traversed the clachan of Glen Effick and then wandered up the glen and across the hills, the elements had free scope to work their evil will, and nothing with life dared venture forth to oppose them. The air was full of hissings and roarings and crackings and rumblings, as trees and roofs swayed and shivered to the blast, and the loosened stones rumbled in the beds of neighbouring torrents. The drowsy lights from the inn door and the post-office disclosed nothing but a sheet of falling rain and an overflowing gutter, and the gleams from the round boles in the cottage shutters were but shining bars across the thick darkness of the night. The two bright lamps of the stage coach from Inverlyon, descending the hill road from the east, glowed like the fierce eyes of some monster of the night, and disclosed something of the scene as they passed along, trees tossing and writhing in the wind, wayside burns broke loose from their bounds and foaming across the road, and for the rest,--slop, slush, and blackness. Within, the tumult out of doors gave edge to the glow and comfort of the snug peat fire on the hearth. The wind, rumbling in the rocking chimney, and occasional raindrops hissing on the embers, seemed but to call forth a ruddier light from that goodly pile of burning peat and peeled coppice oak. True the hearth was but clay, and of clay too was the floor of the apartment, but the flicker and play of the flames hid the one as effectually as the comfortable Brussels carpet concealed the other. The whitewashed cottage walls, as well as some outlying yards of carpet, were covered by bookcases whose tops touched the low ceiling, and big books piled and heaped one on the other as they best might be to save space.

This sombre background was somewhat relieved by the glints of the firelight on a few gilt picture frames containing portraits, and by a few steel engravings built curiously in among the books. Those dear old engravings, which forty years ago embellished every middle class home in Scotland,--John Knox preaching, Queen Mary at Leith after Sir William Allan, and Duncan's stirring memorials of Prince Charlie--they were good wholesome art for every day life, and likely to stir the children's hearts, as did the ballads sung round the hearths of an earlier generation, to an honest love of the brave and the beautiful, and a sturdy pride in their Scottish birth. We have higher art now-a-days, or we think so. We spend more money on it; and if not more discriminative, are at least greatly more critical; but is the moral influence of our walls on our households better now than it was then? The boys and girls of to-day will grow up less narrow. Will they be as loyal and true-hearted?

But to return to the study of the Reverend Roderick Brown, licentiate of the Free Church of Scotland. On the window-shelf were pots of hardy roses in luxuriant bloom, and in the distant corner stood a tall crimson cloth screen of many leaves, behind which were concealed the bed and toilette appurtenances of his reverence the licentiate. Beyond this a door communicated with an inner room; but here there are signs unmistakable of a lady's chamber, so we may not intrude.

Drawn up before the fire there stands a large writing-table, on which are books and much manuscript, and at one end sits the occupant, deep in the composition of one of the five or six discourses he will be expected to deliver in the course of the following week. A tall young man under thirty, well-proportioned and even athletic, but pale and thin, and rather worn as regards the face. The straight black hair which he has tossed back from his face in the throes of composition, displays a forehead pale, blue-veined, and high, but rather narrow, eyes dark and deep-set, beneath shaggy brows, in hollow and blue-rimmed sockets, as of one who has gone through much excitement and fatigue, but burning with a steady fire of enthusiasm, which seems as if it would never go out, so long as a drop of the oil of life remains in the lamp to supply it with fuel. The mouth is long and flexible, not without signs of firmness and vigor, but gentle and serene, a smile appearing to lurk in one of the corners, as awaiting its opportunity to break forth. The whole expression is pure and unworldly. An observer must have said, that, whether or not he might be wise and prudent, he did not look like a fool, and he was most assuredly good.

His sister Mary sits opposite him plying her needle, and crooning to herself some scraps of old world song, but softly, so as not to disturb the flow of the minister's thoughts. She is younger by some years than her brother, tall like him, and with all the grace in repose that comes of well-exercised and symmetrical limbs. The head is small, with a wealth of golden brown hair wound tightly round it, face oval and fair, with the complexion of a shell The eyelids are very full, drooping and long-lashed, and beneath them the eyes look forth like violets from the shade. The hands are large and firm, but white, supple, and perfectly shaped, and it is a treat and a joy to watch her as she sits at work. She seems to exhale the breath of violets, suggested perhaps by the colour of her eyes, as one follows her tranquil movements, like Shelley's hyacinth bells--

'Which rang with a music so soft and intense That it passed for an odor within the sense.'

The varying light of the fire, shining warmly upon her, touches even the folds of her black gown into a subdued repetition of the quivering glories that flicker among her hair.

Those were the disruption times, which all have heard of, and the middle-aged among us can recall more or less vividly. Times so different from the present! When we look back on them, knowing how much there was that was narrow, rugged, and unlovely, we must still feel a regretful admiration for an atmosphere of earnestness and more heroic warmth of feeling than is now attainable to the cold-blooded clear-sightedness and electric dispassionateness of the critical spirit now prevalent, which admits good and detects shortcoming in all varieties of faith and opinion alike, and so, leaves the seeker after the better to follow the worse in pure weariness, satisfied in the end to pursue material advantage, seeing that Truth and Goodness have become abstractions, too high to be attained, or else too widely diffused to be missed, in whatever direction the wayfarer may stray.

In those days the seeker after the goodly pearl of truth, felt constrained to forsake all and followed it; and doubtless the forsaking and the quest brought a moral benefit, though it by no means follows that the form in which they sought it, the Ultramontane fetish of ecclesiastical supremacy--exemption from State interference, combined with an unlimited right to meddle in the State--was in any sense a truth at all. An earnest following out of the supposed truth cannot but be wholesome to the seeker, and to fight for an idea of any kind, must be good in materialistic times.

One is led to use the word 'Ultramontane' in connection with the Free Church 'movement,' by the curious resemblance between the claims of these ardent Presbyterians, and those of the Ultramontane section of the Catholic Church, as well as by the very similar language in which both expressed and supported them. It would seem indeed as if since 1840 a wave of turbulence had passed over the minds of all Churchmen, beginning in this Northern Kingdom and rolling Southwards. England and Ireland have since then been disturbed by unruly priests, and the long pontificate of Pius IX. has witnessed in every country a continued effort of the Spiritual Estate to assert itself against secular authority.

That the struggle in Scotland was for no absolute truth, would appear from the change of front which the body that then arose now presents. It commenced by claiming to have inherited the rights of the historical church, confirmed by act of parliament, to guide the nation and the state in questions of faith and morals. Now it places itself with the voluntary religious associations, and clamours for depriving its own successors of the endowments which its members themselves resigned because of conditions which now do not exist. When Chalmers, ten years before the Disruption, fought the battle of Establishments against Voluntaryism, not only in Scotland, but in England also, he little thought that the Church he was to found, would, in a quarter of a century, become the hottest association of voluntaries in the country! New circumstances have begotten new 'principles,' let us say, for it would not be well to impute anything like trade jealousy to holy men.

Roderick Brown was pursuing his theological studies in Edinburgh, during the years of theological excitement which preceded the catastrophe. Youth is sympathetic, and the leaders of the movement had holy names and historic memories to conjure with. It is not wonderful, therefore, that he caught the enthusiasm of the men about him, and thirsted to bear his part in contending for the truth. At each succeeding vacation he returned to his father's manse with a heightened ardour for ecclesiastical combat; and many and long were their discussions on the Church question and its new lights. To the young man's surprise, he found his arguments fall rather flat and pointless in presence of his father's calm and dispassionate statements of the case; but the elder found the wisdom and understanding gathered in sixty years' intercourse with the Church and the world equally powerless to cool down the heat and ardour of the enthusiastic youth. Therefore, as must ever be the case where affection and respect are combined with common sense, they finally agreed to differ, each forbearing to insist on his own preferences, and confident that the other sought only the right according to his lights.

The disappointment to Doctor Brown was not slight. He felt himself rapidly failing, and he had hoped to find in his son an assistant and successor in whose hands he might contentedly leave the care of his beloved flock, and pass on to an uninterrupted fulfilment the many good works he had commenced in his parish. Besides his parish, the future of his daughter may also have weighed much on the old man's mind. She had been born and bred in the manse, and was as well known to every one of the parishioners, as the minister himself. To the poor she had been the recognised messenger of mercy. Ever since her mother's death (when she was thirteen), had devolved on her with the assistance of the old housekeeper, the many and onerous duties that fall to the country minister's wife; and in fulfilling these she had won the love of rich and poor alike.