The sermon which was to indict by name the sinners was not preached in the kirk of Woodilee the next Sabbath.
For the day after his return from Kirk Aller a post reached the manse from the Pleasance of Edinburgh which in an hour set David on his horse riding hard for the capital. There was plague in the city, and his father was sick of it. It was the plague in a new form, for death did not come quickly; the patient lay for days in a high fever, afflicted with violent headaches and shiverings, and a contraction of muscles and nerves, and then, in nine cases out of ten, passed into a rigor which meant death. There was no eruption on the bodies, and the physicians were at a loss in the matter of treatment. But it was scarcely less deadly than the older visitations, and the dead-bell rang hourly, and the dead-cart rumbled day and night on the cobbles.
David found the old man conscious, but very clear that he was near his end. The family doctor had bled him copiously, applied leeches to his head, and brought a horrid regiment of drugs and vomitories. The son pled with his father to receive them patiently. “God works by means,” he told him, “as Christ cured the blind man with clay and spittle, and what remedy could be more rude than these?”
“Aye, but it was the Lord that laid them on, Davie,” said the patient, “and no an auld wife like McGlashan.” So he sent the physician packing, and engaged a new one, a certain young Crosbie from the Monk’s Vennel, who had studied in France and had at least the merit of letting a sick man die in peace. Instead of smothering the patient under bedclothes, he kept him lightly covered, ordered the window to be open day and night, and let him drench his system with small ale. It is likely that under any treatment the old man would have died, for he was in his seventy~fourth year and had long been ailing, and the plague only speeded the decay of age. But under the new regimen his last days were less of a martyrdom. His head remained clear and he could speak with his son — chiefly of his mother and his childhood.
David lodged not in the city, but in the village of Liberton, and walked in daily to his father’s bedside. He read the Scriptures to him and prayed with him, as his duty demanded, but he felt a certain shyness at inquiring into his father’s state towards God. Nor was the old man communicative. “I’ve made my peace lang syne,” he said, “and I read my title clear, so there’s no need of death~bed wark for me.” But he was full of anxiety for his son. “You’ve chosen a holy calling, Davie lad, and I’m blithe to think you’ve got a downsetting in our calf-country. Man, there were Sempills in the mill o’ the Roodfoot since the days of Robert Bruce. But the ministry in these days is a kittle job, for the preachers are ower crouse, and the Kirk has got its heid ower high. . . . What’s come o’ this Montrose they crack about? . . . Keep you humble before the Lord, my son, for Heaven’s yett is a laigh yett.”
He died peacefully on the third day of September, and David had a busy week settling his affairs — the sale of the business and the household effects and the payment of bequests to servants and distant kin. Hour after hour he sat with the lawyers, for there was a considerable estate, and to his surprise he found himself with worldly endowments such as few ministers of the Kirk possessed. There was money at the goldsmith’s, and in his lawyer’s boxes deeds and sasines and bonds on heritable property, and there would be more to come. His doer, a little old snuffy attorney of the name of Macphail, grew sententious as the business drew to its close. “You’ve both the treasure on earth, Mr. David, and the treasure in Heaven, and it’s a pleasing thought that they’re alike well-guided. Anent the latter, moth cannot corrupt, saith the Word, nor thieves break through and steal, and anent the former a moth will no do muckle ill to a wheen teugh sheepskins, and it would be a clever thief that got inside Georgie Gight’s strong-room in the Canongate, where your bonds are deposited. So you can keep an easy mind, Mr. David, while you wrastle for souls in Woodilee.”
Those were strange days both for death in a bed and for conducting business, for the stricken city was the prey of wild fears. Scarcely a traveller entered her infected precincts, but rumour was as busy as the east wind in May. The battle of Kilsyth had worked a revolution in Scotland. Glasgow had surrendered and welcomed the conqueror, with enthusiasm for his person and largesse for his soldiers. The shires and the burghs were falling over each other in their haste to make submission. Edinburgh had been summoned, and a delegation of the town council had gone out beyond Corstorphine to capitulate to the young Master of Napier. The imprisoned Lords went free from the Tolbooth; David saw the sight — pallid men shivering with prison ague; only the Castle still held for the Covenant. Word came that the King had made Montrose Captain-general of all Scotland, and that soon the victorious army would move towards the Border; already, on the haugh of Bothwell by Clyde side, Sir Archibald Primrose had read the royal commission to the troops. A summons had gone out for a Parliament to be held presently in Glasgow —“for settling religion and peace,” said the proclamation, “and freeing the oppressed subjects of those insufferable burdens they have groaned under this time bygone.”
The ministers who walked the Edinburgh causeway wore gloomy faces. David had a sight of Mr. Muirhead, who sternly inquired of him what he did in the city. “I have come to bury my father,” he replied. “If he died in the hope and the promise,” was the answer, “he has gotten a happy deliverance, for the vials of wrath are opened against this miserable land.” It was a phrase repeated like a password by others of his ministerial brethren, and he replied with a becoming gravity, but he could not in his heart feel any great sorrow. For he remembered the face of the groom at Calidon, and he wondered how that face looked as a conqueror. Pride, he was assured, would not be in it. . . . News came that Montrose was at Cranstoun and moving by Gala Water to the Border. For a moment David had a crazy desire to follow him, to be in his presence, for he had a notion that if he could but have speech again with that young man the shadows and perplexities might lighten from his mind.
At last he set off homeward, and under the rowans at Carlops brig he read a printed paper which had been circulated in the Edinburgh streets — torn across and cast away by many, but by others cherished and pondered. It was a manifesto of Montrose from the camp at Bothwell, and it set out his purpose. In it were the very words used by the groom that night at Calidon. The nobles had destroyed “lawful authority and the liberty of the subject,” the Kirk had coerced men into a blind obedience worse than Popery. He took up arms, he said, for pure religion, “the restoration of that which our first reformers had;” for the King, and the establishment of a central authority; for the plain people and the “vindication of our nation, from the base servitude of subjects.” He confuted the timorous souls “who can commit nothing to God.” He repudiated the charge of blood-guiltiness, for he had never “shed the blood of any but of such as were sent forth to shed our blood and to take our lives.” And he concluded by pointing to the miracles that faith had wrought: “What is done in the land, it may sensibly seem to be the Lord’s doing, in making a handful to overthrow multitudes.” The words came to David with a remembered sound, like the echo of a speaking voice. Could this man be the bloody Amalekite of the Kirk’s denouncing? On which side, he asked his perplexed soul, did the God of Israel fight, for this man’s faith was not less confident than that of the minister of Kirk Aller?
Isobel received him with the reverential gloom which the Scots peasantry wear on an occasion of death.
“So it’s a’ bye, sir. We got the word from the Embro carrier, but I wasna looking for ye yet awhile, for we heard ye were like to be thrang wi’ the lawyer bodies. . . . He just slippit awa’, for how could an auld man stand out against yon wanchancy pestilence? It’s a gait we maun a’ gang, and he would be weel prepared Godward, and at ease in his mind about warldly things, for they tell me he was brawly set up wi’ gear. And there’s just yoursel’ to heir it, Mr. David? . . . But shame fa’ me to speak o’ gear in this sorrowful dispensation, for a faither is a faither though he live ayont the three score and ten years whilk is our allotted span.”
“He died as he lived, Isobel, a humble but confident Christian. I think he was pleased to know that I was settled in his forebears’ countryside.”
“He wad be that, honest man. Fine I mind o’ your gudesire, and mony a nievefu’ o’ meal I gat from him when I was a bairn. But I’m concerned for yoursel’, Mr. David, and fearfu’ lest ye have got a smittal o’ the pestilence. Ye’re fine and ruddy, but there’s maybe fever in your veins. Drink off this wersh brew, sir — it was my mither’s way to caller the blood — just kirnmilk boiled wi’ soorocks.”
David asked concerning the parish.
“Woodilee!” Isobel cried. “If Embro’s a stricken bit, it’s nae waur than this parochine. For the last se’en days it’s been naething but wars and rumours o’ war. Ye’ll hae heard o’ how Montrose has guidit our auld Sion, and now we’ve Antichrist himsel’ on our waterside. Ay, he’s no twenty miles across the hills, campin’ with his Edomites somewhere on Yarrow, as welcome as snaw in hairst. The lads and lasses are a’ fleyed out o’ the sheilin’s, for the Yerl o’ Douglas — weary fa’ him! — and his proud horsemen are drovin’ ower frae Clyde like craws in the back-end. We canna move man nor bestial, and folk winna ride the roads except in a pack, and they tell me that Amos Ritchie wi’ his auld firelock was sent for to convoy the minister o’ Bold to Kirk Aller. The weans daurna keek past the doorstane, and Johnnie Dow winna gang his rounds, and he’s been lyin’ fou at Lucky Weir’s thae three days. There’s nae wark done in a’ Woodilee, nor like to be done — it’s a dowg’s life we’ve gotten, muckle ease and muckle hunger.”
“But the place has suffered no harm?”
“No yet, forbye a wedder o’ Richie Smail’s that Douglas’s dragoons brandered and ate yestreen at the Red Swire. But ony moment a vial may be opened. — What hinders Montrose to come rauvagin’ this airt? for if it’s meat and drink he’s seeking for his sodgers, Woodilee is a bien bit aside yon bare Yarrow hills. Forbye Calidon’s no that far, and they tell me that our auld hirplin’ laird, wha suld rather be thinkin’ o’ his latter end, is high in the command o’ the ungodly, and him and yon sweirin’ Tam Purves will be rampin’ like lions in their pride. Hech, sir, our kindly folk are in the het o’ the furnace, in whilk they will either be brunt to an ass, or come out purified as fine gowd. . . . But what am I claverin’ here for, when ye’re wantin’ your denner? It’s little I hae for ye, for our meal ark is nigh toom, and there’s no a kain hen left on the baulks.”
That night David sat long in his study. It was now the sixteenth day of September, and the sultry weather, which had fostered the plague, was sharpening towards autumn. He had returned from his father’s death-bed in something of the mood in which he had first entered the manse. The confusion in the State was to him only a far-off rumour; he was not greatly concerned whether Covenant or King was a-top, for he had no assurance as to which had the right on its side. But he longed for peace, that he might be about his proper business, for the charge of Woodilee lay heavy on his soul. The wickedness against which he had raged seemed now to him as pitiful as it was terrible, a cruel seduction of Satan’s against which he must contend, not without pity for the seduced. Charity filled him, and with his new tenderness came hope. He could not fail in the struggle before him — God would not permit his little ones to be destroyed.
Had he not forgotten the minister in the crusader? His books caught his eye — he had touched them little during the summer. What had become of that great work, Sempi............