The new immigrants were mostly a sedate and sober folk, as indeed, nearly all paper-makers are. To the easy-going villagers their diligence seemed phenomenal. They were flocking into the mill gates by six in the morning. It was well nigh six in the evening before the tide flowed back toward the village. Among the youths and men there was night-shift and day-shift, and a new and strange pallor began to pervade the street and show itself, carefully washed, in the gallery of Rescobie Kirk. The village girls, finding that they could make themselves early independent, took their places in the long "finishing saal," while elderly women, for whom there had been no outlook except the poorhouse, found easy work and a living wage in Coxon's rag-house.
The increase of the congregation in the second year of Gilbert Denholm's assistantship compelled the Session to bethink themselves of some more permanent and satisfactory arrangement. Finally, after many private meetings they resolved to beard the lion in his den and lay before Dr. Girnigo the proposal that Gilbert should be officially called and ordained as the old man's "colleague and successor."
It was the ruling elder, called, after the name of his farm, Upper Balhaldie, who belled the cat and made the fateful proposition. In so doing that shrewd and cautious man was considered to have excelled himself. But Dr. Girnigo was far from being appeased.
"Sirs," he said, "I have been sole minister of the parish of Rescobie for forty years, and sole minister of it I shall die!"
"Mr. Denholm will be to you as a son!" suggested Balhaldie.
"I have sons of my body," said the old minister, looking full at the quiet men before him, who sat on the edges of their several chairs fingering the brims of their hats; "did I make any of them a minister? Nay, sirs, and for this reason: because the parish of Rescobie has been so near my heart that I would not risk even the fruit of my body coming between me and it!"
"We have sounded Mr. Denholm," said Balhaldie, quietly ignoring the sentimental, "and you may rest assured that you will not be disturbed in your tenancy of the manse. Mr. Denholm has no thought at present of changing his condition, and is quite content with his lodging – and an eident carfu' woman is his landlady the doctor's weedow!"
"Aye, she is that!" concurred several of the Session, speaking for the first time. It was a relief to have something concrete to which they could assent.
Dr. Girnigo looked at his Session. They seemed to shrink before him. Nervousness quivered on their countenances. They tucked their heavily-booted feet beneath the chairs on which they sat, to be out of the way. The brims of their hats were rapidly wearing out. Surely such men could never oppose him.
But Dr. Girnigo knew better. Underneath that awkward exterior, in spite of those embarrassed manners, that air of anxious self-effacement, Dr. Girnigo was well aware that there abode inflexible determination, shrewd common sense and abounding humour – chiefly, however, of the ironic sort.
"Are ye all agreed on this?" he asked.
"I speak in name of the Session!" said Upper Balhaldie succinctly, looking around the circle. And as he looked each man nodded slightly, without, however, raising his eyes from the pattern on the worn study carpet.
The Doctor sighed a long sigh. He knew that at last his trial was come upon him, and nerved himself to meet it like a man.
"It is well," he said; "I shall offer no objection to the congregation calling Mr. Denholm, and I can only hope that he will serve you as faithfully as I have done! I wish you a very good day, gentlemen!"
And with these words the old minister went out, leaving the Session to find their way into the cold air as best they might.
The day after the interview between the Session and the Doctor, Gilbert Denholm called at the manse. He came bounding up the little avenue between the lilac and rhododendron bushes. Jemima Girnigo heard his foot long ere he had reached the porch. Nay, before he had set foot on the gravel she caught the click of the gate latch, which was loose and would only open one way. This Gibby always forgot and rattled it fiercely till he remembered the trick of it.
Then when she heard the rat-tat-tat of Gibby's ash-plant on the panels of the door, she caught her hand to her heart and stood still among her plants.
There was a bell, but Gibby was always in too great a hurry to ring it.
"Perhaps he has come to – " She did not finish the sentence, but the blood, rising hotly to her poor withered cheeks, finished it for her.
"Oh, Miss Jemima!" cried Gibby, bursting in; "I came up to tell you first. I owe it all to you – every bit of it. They are going to call me to be colleague – and – and – we can botanise any amount. Isn't it glorious?"
He held her hand while he was speaking; and Jemima had been looking with hope into his frank, enkindled, boyish eyes. Her eyelids fell at his announcement.
"Yes," she faltered after a pause, "we can botanise!"
"And they wanted to know if I would like to have the manse – as if I would turn you out, who have been my best friend here ever since I came to Rescobie! Not very likely!"
Gilbert had an honest liking for Jemima Girnigo, a feeling, however, which was not in the least akin to love. Indeed, he would as soon have thought of marrying his grandmother or any other of the relationships in the table of prohibited degrees printed at the beginning of the Authorised Version, which he sometimes looked at furtively when Dr. Girnigo was developing his "fourteenthly."
"You are happy where you are?" said Jemima, smiling a little wistfully.
"Oh, yes," cried Gibby enthusiastically; "my landlady makes me perfectly comfortable. She thinks I am a lost soul, I am afraid, but in the meantime she comforts me with apples – first-rate they are in dumplings, too, I can tell you!"
While he spoke Jemima Girnigo was much absorbed over a plant in a remote corner, and more than one drop of an alien dew glistened upon its leaves ere she turned again to the window. Gibby's enthusiasm was a little damped by her seeming indifference.
"Are you not glad?" he asked anxiously; "I came to tell you first. I thought what good times we should have. We must go up Barstobrick Hill for the parsley fern before it gets too late."
"Oh, yes," said Jemima Girnigo, holding out her hand, "I am very glad. No one is as glad as I – I want you to believe that!"
"Of course I do!" cried Gibby; "you always were a good fellow, Jemima! We'll go up to Barstobrick to-morrow. Mind you are ready by nine. I have to be back for a meeting in the afternoon early. It is a hungry place. Put some 'prog' in the vasculum!"
And as from the parlour window she watched him down the gravel, he turned around and wrote "9 A.M." in large letters on the gravel with his ash-plant, tossed his hand up at her in a gay salute, and was gone.
But Gilbert Denholm and Jemima Girnigo did not climb Barstobrick for parsley fern on the morrow, and the "9 A.M." stood long plain upon the gravel as a monument of the frail and futile intents of man.
For before the morrow's morn had dawned there had fallen upon Rescobie the dreaded scourge of all paper-making villages. Virulent small-pox had broken out. There were already four undoubted cases, all emanating from the rag-house of Coxon's mills.
About the streets and close-mouths stood awe-struck groups of girls, uncertain whether to go on with their work or return home. There was none of the usual horse-play among the lads of the day-shift as they went soberly mill-ward with their cans. Grave elders, machinemen and engineers, shook their heads and recalled the date at which (a fortnight before) a large consignment of Russian rags had been received and immediately put in hand.
It was whispered, on what authority did not appear, that the disease was of the malignant "black" variety, and that all smitten must surely die. Fear ran swift and chilly up each