It was the cheerful voice of his friend, Dr. Durie, as he stood by Gibby's bedside.
"What has been the matter with me, Durie?" said Gilbert, though in his heart he knew.
"You have had bad small-pox, my boy; and have had a hot chance to find out whether you have been speaking the truth in your sermons."
Gibby could hardly bring his lips to frame the next question. He was far from vain, but to a young man the thought was a terrible one.
"Shall I be much disfigured?"
"Oh, a dimple or two – nothing to mar you on your marriage day. You have been well looked after."
"You have saved my life, doctor."
And Gibby strove to reach a feeble hand outward, which, however, the doctor did not seem to see.
"Not I – you owe that to some one else."
"The nurse who went out just now?" queried Gibby.
"No, she has just been here a few clays, after all danger had passed."
Gilbert strove to rise on his elbow and the red flushed his poor face.
The doctor restrained him with a strong and gentle hand.
"Lie back," he said, "or I will go away and tell you nothing."
He sat down by the bedside, and with a soft sponge touched the convalescent's brow. As he did so he spoke in a low and meditative tone as though he had been talking to himself.
"There was once a foolish young man who thought that he could take twenty shillings out of a purse into which he had only put half a sovereign. He fell down one day on the street. A woman carried him in and nursed him through a fortnight's delirium. A woman caught him as he ran, with only a blanket about him, to drown himself in the Black Pool of Rescobie Water. Night and day she watched him, sleepless, without weariness, without murmuring – "
"And this woman – who saved my life – what was – her name?"
Gibby's voice was very hoarse.
"Jemima Girnigo!" said the doctor, sinking his voice also to a whisper.
"Where is she – I want to see her – I want to thank her?" cried Gibby. He was actually upon his elbow now.
Dr. Dune forced him gently back upon the pillows.
"Yes, yes," he said soothingly, "so you shall – if all tales be true; but for that you must wait."
"Why – why?" cried impatient Gibby. "Why cannot I see her now? She has done more for me than ever I deserved – "
"That is the way of women," said the doctor, "but you cannot thank her now. She is dead."
"Dead – dead!" gasped Gilbert, stricken to the heart; "then she gave her life for me!"
"Something like it," said the doctor, a trifle grimly. For though he was a wise man, the ways of women were dark to him. He thought that Gilbert, though a fine lad, was not worth all this.
"Dead," muttered Gibby, "and I cannot even tell her – make it up to her – "
"She left you a message," said the doctor very quietly.
"What was it?" cried Gibby, eagerly.
"Oh, nothing much," said Dr. Durie; "there was no hope from the first, and she knew it. Her mind was clear all the three days, almost to the last. She may have wandered a little then, for she told me to tell you – "
"What – what – oh, what? Tell me quickly. I cannot wait."
"That the flowers were blooming in the Upper Garden, and that she would meet you at the Gate!"
The Reverend Gilbert Denholm never married. He bears a scar or two on his open face – a face well beloved among his people. There is a grave in Rescobie kirkyard that he tends with his own hands. None else must touch it.
It is the resting-place of a woman whom love made young and beautiful, and about whose feet the flowers of Paradise are blooming, as, alone but not impatient, she waits his coming by the Gate.
THE TROUBLER OF ISRAEL
Unless you happen to have made one of a group of five or six young men who every Sunday morning turned their steps towards the little meeting-house in Lady Nixon's Wynd, it is safe to say that you did not know either it or the Doctor of Divinity. That is to say, not unless you were born in the Purple and expert of the mysteries of the Kirk of the Covenants.
The denomination was a small one, smaller even and poorer than is the wont of Scottish sects. By the eternal process of splitting off, produced by the very faithfulness of the faithful, and the remorseless way in which they carried out their own logic, by individual pretestings and testifyings, by the yet sadder losses inflicted by the mammon of unrighteousness, when some, allured by social wealth and position, turned aside to worship in some richer or more popular Zion, the Kirk of the Covenants worshipping in Lady Nixon's Wynd had become but the shadow of its former self.
Still, however, by two infallible signs you might know the faithful. They spoke of the "Boady" and of the "Coavenants" with a lengthening of that O which in itself constituted a shibboleth, and their faces – grim and set mostly – lit up when you spoke of the "Doctor."
But one – they had but one – Dr. Marcus Lawton of Lady Nixon's Wynd. He was their joy, their pride, their poetry; the kitchen to their sour controversial bread, the mellow glory of their denomination. (Again you must broaden the aindefinitely.) He had once been a professor, but by the noblest of self-denying ordinances he had extruded himself from his post for conscience sake.
There was but one fly in their apothecary's ointment-pot when my father grew too stiff to attend the Kirk of the Covenants even once a year, and that was that the Doctor, unable to live and bring up a family on a sadly dwindling stipend (though every man and woman in the little kirk did almost beyond their possible to increase it), had been compelled to bind himself to spend part of the day in a secular pursuit.
At least to the average mind his employment could hardly be called "secular," being nothing more than the Secretaryship of the Association for the Propagation of Gospel Literature; but to the true covenant man this sonorous society was composed of mere Erastians, or what was little better, ex-Erastians and common Voluntaries. They all dated from 1689, and the mark of the beast was on their forehead – that is to say, the seal of the third William, the Dutchman, the revolutionary Gallio. Yet their Doctor, with his silver hair, his faithful tongue, his reverence, wisdom, and weight of indubitable learning, had to sit silent in the company of such men, to take his orders from them, and even to record their profane inanities in black and white. The Doctor's office was at the corner of Victoria Street as you turn down towards the Grassmarket. And when any of his flock met him coming or going thither, they turned away their heads – that is, if he had passed the entrance to Lady Nixon's Wynd when they met him. So far it was understood that he mightbe going to write his sermon in the quiet of the vestry. After that, there was no escape from the damning conclusion that he was on his way to the shrine of Baal – and other Erastian divinities. So upon George Fourth Bridge the Covenant folk turned away their heads and did not see their minister.
Now this is hardly a story – certainly not a tale. Only my heart being heavy, I knew it would do me good to turn it upon the Doctor. Dr. Marcus Lawton was the son of Dr. Marcus Lawton. When first he succeeded his father, which happened when he was little more than a boy, and long before I was born, he was called "young Maister Lawton." Then it was that he lectured on "The Revelation" on Sabbath evenings, his father sitting proudly behind him. Then the guttering candles of Lady Nixon's looked down on such an array as had never been seen before within her borders. College professors were there, ministers whose day's work was over – as it had been, Cretes and Arabians, heathen men and publicans. Edward Irving himself came once, in the weariful days before the great darkness. The little kirk was packed every night, floor and loft, aisle and pulpit stairs, entrance hall and window-sill, with such a crowd of stern, grave-visaged men as had never been gathered into any kirk in the town of Edinburgh, since a certain little